


Blissful Silence

by afteriwake



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Blissful Silence, Domestic Bliss, Episode AU: s03e01 The Empty Hearse, Families of Choice, First Kiss, Hugs, Multi, POV Sherlock Holmes, Polyamory, Pre-Episode: s02e03 The Reichenbach Fall, Pre-Poly, Sherlock Holmes/John Watson First Kiss, Sherlock is a Telepath, Sherlock is an Empath, Sherlock's Mind, Silence In Sherlock's Mind, Touch Telepathy, Touch empathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-11
Updated: 2019-04-11
Packaged: 2020-01-11 06:26:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18424746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afteriwake/pseuds/afteriwake
Summary: He has spent his whole life searching for blissful silence in his head, and he’s lucky enough to find it not once but twice.





	Blissful Silence

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Yeomanrand](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yeomanrand/gifts), [shinychimera](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinychimera/gifts).



> So this was written for **Yeomanrand** and **shinychimera** for the Winter Holmestice 2018 round, and I didn't realize I had never posted it here because my laptop had broken shortly after reveals and it was on that and not saved anywhere else. Whoops! But I'm posting it here as a milestone fic, my 1,250th Sherlock fic. Enjoy!

_I am no superman_   
_I have no reasons for you_   
_I am no hero oh, that's for sure_   
_But I do know one thing_   
_Where you are_   
_Is where I belong_   
_I do know where you go_   
_Is where I want to be._   
**from "Where Are You Going" by Dave Matthews Band**

John was blissfully silent.

It had been a rare moment when he had been caught without his leather gloves on. Skin to skin contact made his head explode with emotions and thoughts, as he had been cursed with both touch-telepathy and touch-empathy at birth. His head had filled up with the emotions and thoughts of others long before he could verbalize these things himself, and it had caused him to become a melancholy and withdrawn child, not speaking until the age of five because he was never sure whose thoughts were in his head, it was all so jumbled. He dressed in layers and he never took them off as soon as he was able to dress himself and stayed as covered as possible from head to toe even in the warm months, earning him the derision of his peers.

But his mind was almost always silent, except when on the receiving end of fisticuffs with those who thought his physical torment was their chief form of entertainment in life.

It had been Mycroft who had realized something was fundamentally different about him and did not respond in panic. Instead, he presented him with a pair of leather gloves, a long coat and a forged doctors note that he was to wear these at all times to present to the various schools he had been to. It was almost like he had dealt with this before, he seemed so nonplussed. But it helped ease the torment and tumult of voices in his head, at least until the drugs. The drugs helped more, but only in degrees.

And then one day all his coping mechanisms failed, and there were too many drugs and an overdose...but oh, blissful silence. No matter who poked and prodded at him, he felt nothing, just stillness and whiteness, and a blank mind.

It was with regret he came out of it and had to go back to only a part of his old coping mechanisms.

But with help, albeit help that never knew the full and unadulterated truth, he managed. He coped. And then he met John, and his life changed in the instant he realized he had left his gloves at Angelo’s when they gave chase of the cabbie and here he was, his fingers brushing John’s bare hand and...nothing. No emotions, no thoughts, just the blissful silence he had been craving once again since his coma.

He made excuses to touch John after that because this was his new addiction, the ability to touch another human and keep his own mind and thoughts. John didn’t know the truth at first, he couldn’t, because Sherlock was so terrified John would see him as the freak he had been called for so long from his fellow schoolchildren to even now, in Donovan’s snide remarks from the sidelines of crime scenes.

But one evening the question arose. “Why are you always touching me, Sherlock? Not that I mind and all, but I thought you weren’t...that way.”

But maybe he was, maybe he was just with John. And he knew John preferred women but he had never turned him away, never denied him before.

“Because you make my head quiet,” he had said, his voice barely a murmur. That one crack in the dam led to it all spilling forward, every last bit, how when he touched most people they invaded his head like an army and it had near drove him mad at points and with him, there was just sweet, blissful silence. Comfort, warmth, but silence. A companionable one and he craved it like he craved nicotine and harder drugs, and it ended with a whispered plea: “Please let me keep touching you.”

The kiss on the lips had been a surprise, yes, and the fact that John had initiated it even more so, but for the first time in his entire life Sherlock had felt happy. Warmth comfort and _happiness_ along with his blissful silence. And from that day forward, they shared one bed, more often than not shared one shower in the morning, when it got to the point that intimacy between them that was more than a kiss was on a table. He got to experience some of the things that regular people of the world did.

And then the twist happened: he had to leave, to save John, to save everyone. He had to make the world think he was dead, leave London with a target on his back and a smear on his name. Leave John. Leave his comfort, his warmth, his love.

When he returned and found John had moved on to Mary, he had been crushed. But she had hugged him and it had happened again: nothing. Blissful silence and he said she was the same as him, that was why they had connected. And instead of being a wedge, he found love twofold, he found happiness twofold, he found acceptance and all of the things he could have ever hoped for with John, just more. Better. 

The Holmes-Watson-Morstan household was a chaotic mess as it grew, first with Rosie and then with William and then the other children, but Sherlock and Mary could touch their children, hug them, love them the way both had been craving to be loved when they were children. And even if it was an unusual household they didn’t care. It was comfortable, it was loving, it was theirs, and they were happy, the three adults altogether, the ones who made the others whole. And all was well until the end, in a cottage with bees in the yard and their children and grandchildren gathered together as they lived out the lives they had always wanted, together, never apart, in blissful silence in their heads.


End file.
